Lessons, plan comparisons, & suggestions

[networkingguy347]

I've PM'd the admins about a few things but there are a few things that I'm curious about. I'm just trying to learn from the admins, but anybody's honest thoughtful opinion is welcome. I was wondering if you could post your general strategy for getting your forum started, aside from getting a baseline traffic volume for the traffic to look active.

Where & how do/did you plan to get your visitors from? There had to be some kind of promotion. (No forum can start just on it's own organic traffic, ever.)

How much did your existing website get you in terms of traffic (and repeat posters)?

Did you give up anything on your other sites (or pages) to promote your forum?

What other considerations went in besides how to promote your site?
What did you decide & why?

What lessons have you learned?

What advice would you give to me if I ever decide to start a forum having gone through it?

 

[Linda Buquet]

My carpal is killing me today so can't type too much.

But part of how I fairly easily built the forum in the beginning was due to the fact that I already had a following and was well known in the industry. Lots of people that knew me from modding and running other forums followed me over here. I also do a lot of blogging and people also followed me from my blog to the forum.

Also I did some PPC and had some contests. But more than anything you need good content and the right attitude to build a forum. I was lucky early on to attract some people that shared my values and were also good posters. As we posted more good content and helped more people - more joined and told others and it just gradually grew from there.